[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
though clearly no drugs have ever been created by a private business, so clearly you win there.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know how you mixed up unprofitable vaccines with any and all drugs, but ok. Way to twist my words beyond all recognition.

[ QUOTE ]
My argument is we don't need fusion, there are many other energy sources to get us through the next hundred years or so.

[/ QUOTE ]

You really need to watch the smalley video.

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is we are awash in cheap energy, so huge investments in new sources of energy don't make much sense, for private or public research. The peak oil people say our prices are about to sky-rocket, well, I'm waiting...

[/ QUOTE ]

So what, we wait till gasoline is $5 a gallon before we start to worry? When 1 billion Chinese people start to become oil hungry and Russia comes back online we still wait and sit back to see what happens? I really don't think you understand how long it takes to train a physical scientist let alone develop these technologies. You add those two together, not to mention the current scarcity of those professionals, and you are talking about one hell of a delayed response time.

I also don't think you understand the amount of energy China will require once it develops.

As for fuels, yes we can always squeeze more out of mother earth. But there are costs. Research can offer clean cheap energy and a plethora of technologies to drive our economy. If we keep on squeezing mother earth, energy will become more and more expensive and the damage we do mother earth will increase dramatically. That is of course unless you don't believe the past 400,000 year C02/temp correlation from the Vostok Ice core has any value at all.